Russia slams Charles over Hitler quip
May 23, 2014, 7:49 am

Russian officials said remarks comparing Putin to Hitler are “outrageous and low” [PPIO]

Russian officials late Thursday said they were outraged at remarks made by Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the English throne, comparing President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a statement: “If such comments were genuinely made, they do not reflect well on the future King of England. We are not concerned, we are outraged.”

“We view the use of the Western press by members of the British royal family to spread the propaganda campaign against Russia on a pressing issue – that is, the situation in Ukraine – as unacceptable, outrageous and low,” he said.

The Prince’s comments were allegedly made during a royal visit to Canada when he spoke with a Polish immigrant and compared Putin’s Ukraine policy to Hitler’s in 1939 Europe.

Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UK Alexander Kramarenko met with officials from the Foreign Office in London but was told that there would be no comment on issues raised during a private conversation.

Charles had earlier said he was speaking privately.

Lukashevich nevertheless said that “as one of the members of the UK’s Labour Party said, royals should be seen and not heard”.

In London, some political pundits said that Charles was entitled to freely express himself, while others said he should have showed some tact and refrain from making statements that affect foreign policy.

For many Russians, any comparison to Hitler is considered insulting, a former UK ambassador to Russia told London’s Daily Mail.

Hitler is responsible for the killing of at least 22 million people in the former Soviet Union. Every May 9, Russia commemorates the “Great Patriotic War” and the Soviet military’s destruction of Nazi forces.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.